A Response to the Healthy Happy Meal

The Snooth-McDonald's Pairing Addendum

On Tuesday, the company announced that they will be halving the amount of french fries and adding fruit in the Happy Meal, in efforts to cut down the calorie count. The web has been much abuzz ever since, with everyone from parents to First Lady Michelle Obama applauding the changes.

With our increasingly popular fast food wine pairings series (new drive-through pairings coming very soon, we promise) we thought it was appropriate to post a Snooth response to the menu change. Think of it as the Snooth-McDonald's Pairing Addendum.

Snooth-McDonald's Pairing Addendum

As many of you will remember, we did not actually include a wine-fry recommendation in Snooth-McDonald's Pairing, Version 1.0. We plan to clarify that here, regardless of the decrease in the fry per Happy Meal ratio. The grease and salt combination of the fries paired best with the Prosecco, whose acidic flavor turned creamy with the fries, as it did for the McNuggets. And what we said about the dipping sauces for McNuggets is applicable with fries as well - though Prosecco makes a perfect pair for a naked fry or nugget, adding a sauce makes it a whole new ball game.

For the green apple slices, we decided to call in the experts and consulted with Snooth Editor-in-Chief and fast-food pairing extraordinaire Gregory Dal Piaz for his wisdom.

"Something with a little sugar in it, like a German Riesling or a nice Chenin Blanc, perhaps from Vouvray," Greg says. "Or a lightly sweet sparkling wine. Prosecco from Italy generally has a touch of sweetness to it and the wine's apple and pear flavors are a natural match."

Unfortunately for Micky D's, or really for us since we are the ones striving to pair wines with all the grub you can throw in the old fly trap, Greg added that there is no perfect pairing for raw apples. Turns out there's even an old English adage, "buy on apples, sell on cheese," alluding to the fruit's ability to make any but the finest wines less appealing.

It goes without saying that, while these wines may pair with the Happy Meal, this is not encouragement to feed your child wine... though we won't take a stance on you throwing something in your kid's soda if they won't stop asking to meet Ronald McDonald himself - okay, kidding.

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Comments

For some inexplicable reason, the writers here are obsessed with crappy food. I don't know what world you live in, but McDonald's has not been the word on my lips and certainly not by tastebuds. I don't eat that crap, and when my kids were living in my house, I did not let them eat it either. I did not subscribe to this site to constantly be reading about McDonald's. So give it up already.

Considering that you have mastered the option of not eating at McDonalds it's surprising that you have not mastered the option of not reading those two articles, which represent approximately .4% of the articles we publish each year.

Actually, my husband and I were so impressed by Version 1 of this article, which we found on the HuffingtonPost, that we posted the link on our blog http://www.localvinacular.com. We also don't eat McDonald's, but a lot of Americans do. Consider that and the fact that wine consumption is higher than ever before in this country: I can see there is bound to be crossover. Great article! If I were pairing, I would choose something very light and drinkable as the fat, salt, and sugar content in McDonald's food is so strong. Perhaps a Beaujolais :-) or a crisp, light Riesling.